UCLAs Mick Cronin may be coach reborn with rugged roster fitting his style

Late this spring, the obituary on the Mick Cronin era at UCLA was flooding message boards.A coach who hadn’t reached the NCAA Tournament’s second weekend since 2023 had missed on too many prime transfer-portal targets, particularly at small forward and center.The roster didn’t have nearly enough offensive firepower after losing its top two scorers.At best, it seemed, Cronin’s latest batch of Bruins was bound for another long flight to play another top team early in the NCAA Tournament.

Back-to-back second-round losses — to Tennessee in 2025 and UConn in 2026 — had soured even some of the coach’s most devoted supporters.Others were still simmering over the coach’s ejection of Steven Jamerson II, the backup center who was sent to the locker room after committing a hard foul.Almost no one could envision a path back to the coach’s early successes that included a 2021 Final Four run.Then, in midsummer, came a development as breathtaking as fireworks streaming across a black July sky.The signing of Nikola Kusturica, a 6-foot-9 budding superstar from Serbia who was widely considered an early contender to be the top pick in the 2028 NBA Draft, wildly shifted the narrative around the Bruins to something else entirely.We’re so back.The addition of a precocious 17-year-old who was a gifted scorer and defensive disruptor changed the perception of the roster and the coach who assembled it.Suddenly, the Bruins had star power.

They had another rim protector in addition to center Xavier Booker.They had their starter at small forward, not to mention a massive draw for those pricey courtside Hollywood Seats inside Pauley Pavilion.“He’s just a special guy,” Cronin said of a player who could routinely flirt with triple-doubles.

“He can shoot, pass, handle it and he’s 6-10, but it’s like he’s 7 feet with his arms.”If Kusturica was the headliner, his supporting cast was starting to build its own buzz ahead of the No.22 Bruins’ season opener agai...